Last week, a man named Nicola Perullo was named the new president of the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont, Italy. He replaces the larger-than-life founder of the Slow Food movement and its earliest voice, Carlo Petrini, who recently passed away.

During the seven years I taught in the graduate program there, I only met Perullo once, in passing.

But the students would often share their impressions of his seminars with me.

Perullo is a brilliant scholar and self-styled contemporary philosopher. On paper, there’s no doubt about it, this dude has the goods (Derrida was an advisor on his doctoral thesis!). He’s carved a name for himself in the world of food and wine thanks to his extensive and impressive writings on the aesthetics of wine.

Because I taught communications, my students and I often discussed the historic natural wine movement and its epistemological implications: how natural wine, as an abstract concept, shaped our knowledge of wine knowledge.

I can’t remember a semester when the students didn’t ask me what I thought of Perullo’s core belief (and I believe that “belief” is the right word here because of the quasi-religious elements of the biodynamic and natural wine movements): if a wine tastes good, then it must be bad, he would instruct them. In other words, if it pleases it must be a product of the Babylonian wine industry.

It’s a paradox. It’s a conundrum. And it flummoxed my students.

It was Carlo Petrini himself who anointed Perullo as his successor. I can’t recall anywhere in his writings where Petrini made such an audacious claim. But it’s clear that this is the direction Perullo will lead the institution.

Until my final year there, I enjoyed teaching in Pollenzo immensely. But I also saw how the hyperaestheticization of wine distances it from its nutritional design. My students would often complain how Perullo and his natural wine fellows (all from Triple A distributors) would demean them because of their supposed lacunose wine knowledge.

It’s one of my biggest takeaways from the experience: if wine can’t be good and fun and shared in joy and friendship, what’s the point? 

Now that I’m no longer traveling two weeks out of every month, I’ve been enjoying the home time and the Houston time.

Our family lives just to the southwest of Houston’s “Loop” where most of the high-profile and fine dining takes place. While we have ready access to the central dining scene, we are also just a stone’s throw from an archipelago of small municipalities in the western section of our megalopolis.

With more time on the ground and yawny with the however wonderfully vibrant culinary world inside the Loop, I’ve been treating myself to lunch out with one overarching criterion: the restaurant where I dine has to be to the west of me (not to the east inside the Loop).

One of my earliest finds has been the extraordinary Middle Eastern restaurant Kabab Shack and Grill.

From the outside, this joint looks like just another anonymous strip mall restaurant. But once you walk inside and notice that the cooks are impeccably outfitted in black chef coats and toques, it becomes clear that the venue’s focus is gastronomic excellence. The older gentleman at the counter, whom I imagine is the owner, reminded me of the old school kebab places I’ve frequented in France, Italy, and Israel.

I ate every last bit of my gyro-stuffed pita. The meat was wonderfully savory without being excessively salty. The lettuce, onion, and tomato were fresh, crisp, and flavorful. And the fries, perfectly dressed with spice and tahini, were among the best I’ve ever eaten.

The thing that blew me away about this place was the professionalism of the cooks and the manager/owner. The kitchen was so clean and orderly I thought I was eating at Boulud in New York. It took a minute for my order to come out (I was one of the first customers that day) and one of the cooks made a point to thank me for my patience. The older gentleman who took my order was cordial and warm.

I loved this place and can’t wait to explore more of the menu. My new series on west Houston dining: “Worth the Drive West.” Stay tuned for more.

My political posts are getting a lot of views these days, with literally hundreds of comments. When I posted about our protest of the Neo-Confederate monument in Orange, Texas, where more than 20 Confederate battle flags are flown, a number of commenters disparaged me and my fellow protesters as damn and dumb Democrats.

Conspicuously displayed Neo-Confederate may be a Dem-v-Rep issue in other places. But in Orange, that’s impossible: the district is overwhelmingly Republican. In 2024, more than 80 percent of voters supported Trump. I hate to break it to my detractors, it’s one of the rubiest red places in the country.

And yet, the City of Orange vehemently and aggressively opposed the memorial’s construction in the years leading up to its unveiling.

The town’s Republican-controlled municipal government swiftly passed a law limiting the height of new flag poles (the Sons of Confederate Veterans planned for the flags to be visible from the interstate). They also made it abundantly clear to the Sons that they would not be able to hold a public event at the site because it lacks disabled parking.

I’ve personally spoken to a number of city leaders, all of them Republican, who have expressed their opposition to the site. Whether they oppose it for moral or practical reasons may be up for debate. But they all agree that this racist eyesore counters the winning narrative that Orange is returning to its glory days as a major industrial hub (Chevron just opened a sprawling new refinery there).

The best news: the City of Orange has greenlighted a $50 million mall to be erected at the same corner of MLK Dr. (yes, MLK Dr.!) where the monument stands. I can’t imagine Republican business leaders won’t want this albatross to scare people off. The memorial is in decline, with many of the flags badly damaged. Nearly a decade after it was inaugurated, the old white men who built it are now in their 80s. (The old geezer who manages the site goes to our family’s church and I see him every year at Easter in the pews.)

There is a season… turn, turn, turn.